Secret Location - Bradford-on-Avon

25th June 2011

For our latest paranormal investigation, I had arranged for the team to visit a secret location in the beautiful historic town of Bradford on Avon. It has been a personal ambition of mine to arrange an investigation at this particular location for quite a while, and I was excited to have finally gained permission to spend an evening in this lovely building.

I had kept the address of our investigation a secret right up to the time arranged for the team to meet, giving a nearby car park as a point of reference.

The building dates from c1500 (originally a Church House) and was once used as a school house in the 1800s.

Whilst we were waiting for the team to arrive, David and I set up a series of trigger object experiments. One was placed in the downstairs room and the other in the main hall above. Both trigger objects were coins arranged in the form of a cross that I had placed on some coloured card and drawn around in pencil. The Idea is to see if we could capture any poltergeist activity by encouraging any spirit people to move the objects. I have used various objects in the past, such as toy cars, marbles and a crucifix, but I find that money seems to nearly always achieve results. I use two pence coins as they resemble old coins in colour and size. We also took some base line readings such as EMF levels (Electro Magnetic Field) and temperature readings. It is thought that if there is spirit activity, it can give off EMF’s at a level that can be detected. Also it is thought that if there is an unusually high natural EMF level in the area, this can affect some people, and cause them to experience dizziness, temperature fluctuations and hallucinations which could be mistaken for paranormal activity. The EMF readings were normal in all rooms. During this time, David also thought he heard a latch on one of the two doors in the main hall rattle.

Then we had word that the team had arrived. David went to meet them and bring them back to the building.

The team members for this investigation consisted of myself, David, Maria, Chris, Loretta and Sharon.

Once everyone had been shown around the building, we split into two teams. Team one was Maria, Loretta and Chris, and team two was David, Sharon and I. Team one went to the lower room and my team remained in the main hall above.

At this point in the evening it was still quite light, and so I used this time to try some experiments with the divining rods. With this experiment I asked in my mind for the rods to show me where any spirit people were standing in the room. The rods swung so that one was pointing at the two doors at the far end of the room, and the other pointed behind me. I then changed position and stood on the opposite side of the room whereupon the rods swung again and pointed to the same places, but this time one rod remained in front of me and the other swung towards the doors. We then decided to set up a glass divination experiment and placed a table near the two doors at the end of the room. We also placed a video camera to film us, and we sat around the table in such a way that no one obstructed the view of the camera. I started with the glass first and asked if there were any spirit people in the room. After about five minutes, the glass felt as if it wanted to move, and we became aware of a loud tapping noise at the far end of the room where there are some stacked chairs. We asked again and requested that if this was a spirit person, could they tap again. We obtained a response very rapidly. We asked if the spirit was happy that we were there. We received two knocks in reply. I took this as a no. We asked if the spirit could move the glass. The glass did move slightly, but I was not convinced that it wasn’t us unwittingly moving it. I then suggested that we tried placing our hands flat on the table and requesting that the spirit person try moving the table. We did this, and almost at once the table started to move. We heard tapping from under the table in answer to our questions, and the table also lifted up on two legs during the experiment. Unfortunately, just as we were getting the energy really going, the team from downstairs came to join us and the energy totally dissipated. Team one said that they had not been very successful downstairs, and so I suggested that they take over the main hall and our team move down to the lower room.

In this room we took some pictures and again set up the glass divining experiment. Once again we positioned our camera so that we were not blocking its view and resumed our experiment. As we started to request a spirit to attend us, we distinctly heard a stone hit the floor. We stopped what we were doing and proceeded to look for the stone. We thought that we had found it, but discovered on closer inspection that it was a piece of tissue paper, and so we returned to the table and resumed the experiment. Very soon we obtained movement from the glass. The glass was very slow to move at first, but it proceeded to move around to each of us, stopping at each person until we had introduced ourselves. We determined from further questioning that this was a female spirit that used to live in the building. (I was not aware until later that the original layout of the structure used to be two buildings, and that one of these buildings would have been residential) The glass started to move again with bigger bolder movements and we all sensed the energy getting stronger. I often sense this as a coldness that creeps down my back, but this can manifest itself very differently for other people. I asked if this was a new spirit person and the glass moved. I asked the glass to go back to the centre, and to move in a circular motion around the table. The glass did this and I asked if the spirit person was male. The glass moved in a straight line and then stopped. I then asked is the spirit was happy with us being in the building. The glass moved but in a rather uncertain way. I then asked if the spirit was happy that there were women in the building. Again it moved as if it wasn’t sure. We then decided to see if we could do some table tipping as this spirit was quite strong. We placed our hands flat on the table and again the table started to move to our questions. The table started to rise up on two legs. (The next day on reviewing the video tape we were delighted to see that we had captured this very clearly. On this footage you can clearly see our hands and legs so that it would have been obvious if one of us had been cheating. What makes this quite compelling evidence is that the table lifts where there is no one seated.) At this point in the experiment I had the sensation that there was someone sitting next to me, and that I could almost see their forearms and hands with my peripheral vision. From questions we asked, we determined that the spirit was a local gentleman and a member of the Free Masons. He was also a figure of authority in the community. I mentioned quite a few professions, and the spirit seemed to like the title of Professor. We determined that the spirit was a Professor of English Literature, lived locally, liked to visit this building but visited other places so that he was not “grounded” to one place. We also found out that he died in 1912. We have since been able to verify this information. During the filming of this experiment, we have been able to capture several orbs of light which are believed to be the first stage of a spirit manifesting.

We decided that now would be a good time for a break, and invited the Professor to join us.

Once the break was over, we cleaned up downstairs and went to join the others. They had also been having success with using a table, but theirs had not tipped, just moved. We stood talking for a while, and this is where we started to get stones thrown at us. We often notice that during paranormal investigations, that if you start to talk amongst yourselves, the spirits do something as if they are trying to attract your attention, but the moment you pay attention to them, the activity stops. We managed to find some of the stones in the darkness and they did not match the ceiling or walls, so we can rule out pieces of plaster falling from the ceiling. The pieces were all roughly the same size and appeared to be the same stone found on the window ledges downstairs. This activity lasted for about twenty minutes and we have caught some of this on camera. Again, once we switched on the video camera, the activity slowed down and eventually stopped.

As it was getting late, we decided to try one last table tipping experiment. This time we all sat round the table I had set up earlier in the main hall, and asked to see if there were any spirit people with us. Again the table started to move quite quickly in reply. We felt that this was a male spirit who had been communicating with Chris and his team from team one. During the duration of this experiment, the table took on a drumming, almost hypnotic rhythm that we associate with chanting. The drumming got louder and faster, and this happened with two different rhythms. We also heard banging coming from the fireplace and I thought I saw something disappear around a chair where the chairs were stacked at the far end of the room. What I saw was too short to be a person, and I thought, may be a cat or dog. We have since discovered that there used to be a stairwell where the chairs are now stacked. Did I see a spirit person going down the stairs? We also got the table to tip up on three legs during this experiment. Mumbling sounds like someone not quite within earshot and sighs were also heard by a few members of the team.

Another quite amusing thing that happened which we didn’t realise might be paranormal at the time was that at the very end of the evening David put a light on in the kitchen so that we could make sure we had collected everything (we did not want to put on the main lights in case we attracted attention from outside). When he went to switch off the light and walk away, it came back on again. This happened four times. We just put it down to a dodgy switch as the building is very old, but I have since found out that this was not normal and the electrical equipment is checked regularly.

We can conclude that this has been a very productive evening where a number of phenomena were witnessed. We had light anomalies, audible taps, bangs, voices, porting; table tipping, visual sightings and poltergeist activity, and the trigger object experiment showed that coins had moved slightly in both rooms.

I would like to thank the persons involved for their kind permission for this experiment to take place, and also David, Maria, Chris, Loretta and Sharon for giving up their Saturday and making this investigation possible.